THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



NOVEMBER, 1875. 

 THE RELATIONS OF WOME:^ TO CRIME. 



By ELY VAN DE WAEKEE, M. D. 

 1. 



THE first traditional crime, the fratricide of Abel, was a natural 

 outgrowth from the conditions of society, which, compared to 

 the present relations of civilized men, existed germ-like around him. 

 These conditions alone gave motive and direction to the deed. To 

 all the after-centuries of human crime this jmmal offense has existed 

 as a type. Both in cause and effect it is reduced to its simplest pro- 

 portions. The criminal represents the retrograde tendency of society; 

 the savagism which exists in every community. Order and progress 

 are preserved by an irrepressible conflict waged on the border-land, 

 as it were, of civilization. Many of these crimes grow out of the 

 artificial wants of society. Others are but relative and belong to 

 particular conditions, or orders of men, and at other times and places 

 are without meaning and void of offense. Thus society is ever eager 

 for the warfare, and, at the time it creates the crime, prepares the 

 weapons for its punishment. 



The propensity to crime is a fixed element in human nature. Que- 

 telet, whom I have frequently referred to in the course of these papers, 

 has with singular sagacity and perseverance reduced the social rela- 

 tions of man nearly to an exact science. The dark and tortuous 

 by-ways in life, which so many seem perforce to follow, arrange them- 

 selves with the regularity of geometrical lines under the clear illumi- 

 nation of his analysis. Yet these are surface-lines only. There are 

 profound depths of human misery and crime, over which a veil seems 

 drawn by a merciful hand, and in which we have but a suspicion of 

 the force of law. But, in these depths, in which the terminal fibres 

 of human relations find soil and sustenance, can be found the origin 

 of the ordinances under which these surface-lines are grouped. If 

 this he so, it follows that crime must be studied as a natural phenora- 



VOL. Tin. 1 



